


The Great Gay Crisis of 1937

by Ginny_Potter



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Fluff, Half-JewishHalf-Christian!Bucky, Humor, Internal Conflict, M/M, Mentions of Socialist!Steve, Mentions of Steve Rogers/Gail Richards, Pre-World War II Bucky Barnes/Steve Rogers, Rich!Bucky, Sexual Crisis Trope, Sort of Period-Typical Internalised Homophobia, There Was Just One Couch Cushion Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-30
Updated: 2019-11-30
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:08:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21616618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ginny_Potter/pseuds/Ginny_Potter
Summary: Now, Bucky Barnes wasn’t a saint. He was a decent half-Christian and he was a decent half-Jew and he had spent most of his life jumping from one church or temple to the other like a pinball – Shabbat with his father, Sunday school with his mother, sometimes even weird festivities like the Immaculate Conception with Steve and Sarah Rogers. So, he had had his fair share of religious induced culture of suppression. But probably this eclectic upbringing had screwed up something in some basic concept. Like, you know, theYou shall not lie with a male as with a womanpart. Well. Three religions and everyone agreed on that. Wasn’t that just swell?Or, how shirtless pics of Cary Grant and Randolph Scott triggered Bucky's sexuality crisis.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 33
Kudos: 246
Collections: Steve Rogers & Bucky Barnes AUs





	The Great Gay Crisis of 1937

**Author's Note:**

> Hello everyone!  
> I hope you are having a nice weekend.  
> So, this fic has been written for my lovely friend Marta's birthday. It's basically a self-indulgent origin story for Bucky's realization of his feelings for Steve.  
> I did as much research as possible for this fanfiction (these two Tumblrs are invaluable: [ historicallyaccuratesteve ](https://historicallyaccuratesteve.tumblr.com/) and [ steve-rogers-new-york ](https://steve-rogers-new-york.tumblr.com/) ), browsing through academic publications about 30s Hollywood, biographies of Cary Grant and a whole stack of 30s gossip magazines. You can find all the photos mentioned online, but not all the magazines, sadly. I did romanticize a lot Cary Grant and Randy Scott's relationship, but I guess that since the fic is from Bucky's point of view and Bucky has just a bunch of gossip magazine articles it's quite fitting the purpose of the story.  
> Please contact me if you'd like any references because I kept most of the publications I looked into!  
> I did try hard with the 1930s American English and slang, researched a lot, but alas I live in Britain in 2019 and I am not an expert. If you think something's anachronistic, please tell me. Also, I am not Jewish. I looked into that too, obviously, but I'm only human, so please, tell me if I got something wrong.  
> I want to thank [ Ambros ](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ambros/pseuds/Ambros) for being an amazing beta reader, despite going against her ship to correct my fanfic. Every single remaining mistake that you can find here is on me. I want to thank Riccardo, my historical consultant, and I want to thank Maddalena for the beautiful art she produced. And last but not least, [ aryastark_valarmorghulis ](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aryastark_valarmorghulis/pseuds/aryastark_valarmorghulis) for helping me out with obscure secondary comics characters and dog breeds.  
> So, yeah, happy birthday Marta!

It was early morning when Bucky stopped on the threshold of the kitchen of his parents’ house. The French door that faced the garden, with its beautiful small collection of growing vegetables and spices, was spread open, letting the fresh air come inside, together with the chirping of the morning birds. It was a beautiful late summer day, the air was starting to clear from the suffocating mugginess of August, time rolling lazily towards Fall.

He smiled when he spotted all three of his sisters sitting around the wide, wooden kitchen table, still in their night-gowns. Becca and Martha had their hair carefully pinned to their heads, to keep their auburn curls in shape during the night, while Judith, the youngest, sported two long dark brown braids, that brushed her waist every time she squirmed on the plain chair. They weren’t speaking, still sleepy and grumpy, picking at their breakfast without much intention. Abigail, the cook, wasn’t there, she probably went to chase down the milk boy; there was a new one, she had told him, quite displeased, the week before, and he kept skipping their house because of the new hedges half covering the front gate. In her irritation, there was a considerable amount of unspoken critic towards his father’s new passion: landscape gardens.

Becca raised her head first.

“Bucky? What are you doing here?”

Bucky grinned and crossed the room, snatching the soft piece of bread that Becca had already dipped in honey and stuffing his face with it.

“Hey!” she protested, hitting him on his hip with the rolled newspaper she was about to open.

Bucky smiled innocently, eyebrows wiggling, and walked around the table to fall on the chair closer to Judith. She beamed at him, dimples on her still child-chubby cheeks. “Good morning, Bucky! It’s good to see you.”

“Morning,” he answered, mouth full, and played with one of her braids, bouncing it in his palm with a soft smile.

She giggled.

“Don’t talk while you are eating,” Becca scolded him, hitting his left hand, which was ready to steal another piece of challah.

Bucky kicked her under the table. She yelped and kicked him back.

“Quit it, you two,” Martha moaned, hiding a huge yawn behind her hand. “To what do we owe the pleasure, Bucky?”

Bucky’s gaze jumped from one girl to the other. “You look surprised as if I am not here every other day.”

“Never this early.”

“It’s seven am.”

“Where’s Steve?”

He smiled knowingly at Judy and she blushed furiously. Since she had turned twelve, she started developing a growing crush on Steve and everyone found it extremely endearing, especially because teasing her about it – and Steve with her – had become an amusing pastime for half of the family.

“Yeah, where’s Steve?” Martha topped her sister off, sparing her. “Haven’t seen you in two different places since 1932.”

Bucky rolled his eyes. “I’m here alone all the time,” he said, and it was true. Mostly. “Steve’s working,” he grabbed an apple from the wicker basket at the center of the table and took a bite.

“Oh, so that’s why you are here for breakfast. You’re loooonely,” Becca sing-sang, pushing her chair back, opening one of the drawers and throwing him his napkin, silver ring and everything, when the juice of the apple started dripping along his hand to his wrist, threatening to stain his shirt.

“Thanks,” Bucky said, automatically. “And no, I’m not. I thought to come by and visit you ungrateful brats. I got business to do nearby.”

“Oooh, he got business. Big man,” Martha elbowed Judith and she giggled, eyes full of mirth.

Bucky rolled his eyes. Why did he think it would be a good idea? “You know what? I thought I’d drive you two to school, but I’ve changed my mind.”

A chorus of whines and promises to be good raised from the two youngest Barnes sisters and Bucky and Becca exchanged an amused look. Becca had graduated the spring before, and she was enjoying the last weeks of peace while she waited for the academic year at Barnard to start.

“Alright, alright, I feel magnanimous,” he waved a hand in the air and took a bite from his apple.

He sniggered when he spotted Judy trying to spell the difficult word in the corner of his eye.

“What business do you have nearby?” Becca asked, opening the newspaper – the New York Leader, grandpa was going to have a stroke if he ever busted her, but dad was lenient – and starting to turn the pages with affected care. God, Steve was a bad influence with all his socialist talk.

“This and that,” Bucky shrugged, taking another piece of challah and opening a marmalade jar. The smell of strawberries made him smile, a bit nostalgic. Abigail had been preparing those little glass jar treats since they were children. The containers were smaller than usual so that the children wouldn’t get bored. It was nothing like the stuff he and Steve bought at the shop in Brooklyn Heights. He had to ask Abigail to make them some, it would keep.

“Very eloquent, Bucky,” Becca deadpanned.

“I ain’t the one going to college,” he smirked.

“You talk like Steve,” Judith pointed out, taking the strawberry stuffed challah from his hand as if he had just spent three precious minutes preparing it for her and not for himself.

“Course I do,” he answered, resigning himself to spread marmalade over another squishy loaf of bread. “Been living with _real_ people for almost a year.”

“We are real people!” Judy squeaked indignantly.

“Ma still cries about that, you know?” Becca said casually, ignoring her; then she pressed a hand against her chest, eyelashes fluttering and eyes welling up with fake tears. “‘My poor baby boy living in… in...’” she paused, dramatically. “‘ _Brooklyn Heights_.’” Her face did a thing, as if she had just stepped on something disgusting.

Bucky snorted.

Judith bit her strawberry challah. “Don’t say that, mom likes Steve.”

“She does,” Becca allowed. “But just because it is inevitable. Steve is very polite,” she smirked. “And Bucky would have run away with the gypsies if she ever forbade him to see Steve.”

Bucky rolled his eyes. “You are so dramatic. Remind me why you are not auditioning on Broadway?”

Becca didn’t miss a beat. “Because ma’s level of tolerance reached its peak when my dear brother moved to…” dramatic pause. “ _Brooklyn Heights_.”

Judith giggled. Bucky pinched her cheek. “Don’t worry, duckling. Ma is totally going to support your marriage with dear Steven.”

She squeaked in indignation, heart-shaped face flushing rapidly. She slapped Bucky’s hand away. “I don’t want to marry Steve!” she protested, her rosy cheeks betraying her. She closed her small fists and jumped down the chair, before storming out, presumably towards her bedroom, braids bouncing on her shoulders.

“How are you all so chatty this morning?” Martha intervened, eyebrows furrowing grumpily behind the magazine she was reading. She was all folded on the chair, the heels of her feet pressing against the edge of the seat. Their mother would have definitely scolded her for that. Bucky smirked.

“Whatcha readin’?”

Becca rolled her eyes at the far-fetched drawl.

“None of your business,” Martha answered sharply, but her forehead was the same color as her sister’s cheeks.

Bucky and Rebecca exchanged a look. Becca raised her eyebrows, as if to say she had no idea. Bucky tried to remember if he had seen Martha’s magazine on the table when he entered, but nothing came to his mind. She had always been the quietest and the sneakiest of them.

“Aw, come on Martha, it cannot be worse than Becca’s socialist propaganda.”

Becca hit him in the head with said socialist propaganda.

Slowly, silently, Martha closed her magazine and turned it around to hide the cover. Her socked feet slipped on the floor. A wolfish grin spread on Bucky’s face: she was readying herself to run if he attempted something. And, because someone put in his head that you never ever back off from a challenge, he did.

They started running around the table, screeching and laughing and yelling at each other, while Becca cheered for one or the other, depending on who was winning. Bucky had no idea how it was possible that either of his parents hadn’t run down the stairs yet, fearing for their daughters’ lives. But anyway. Martha was fast, but Bucky was bigger and finally managed to trap her, slamming the French door closed right before she attempted to threw herself out of the room. They brawled a bit more, Martha putting up a decent fight, scratching and biting like a kitten, but finally, with a yelp of satisfaction, Bucky managed to snatch the magazine. He raised his hands as high as possible, squinting to read the title on the cover. There was the portrait a woman with a fashionable flowery foulard around her head, standing out against the yellow background.

“ _Modern Screen_?” he read, questioningly.

He had no idea what that was.

Martha groaned, defeated. “Please don’t tell ma, she thinks I am too young for that.”

Rebecca laughed, delighted. “You _are_ too young. Give it here, Bucky.” She jumped up and grabbed the magazine.

Bucky frowned. “Hey! Why would ma disapprove? What’s _Modern Screen_?”

Becca giggled – actually giggled – Bucky didn’t remember seeing her giggle since she was Judith’s age. Martha groaned again, clearly readying herself for the upcoming embarrassment.

“Do you live under a rock, Bucky? He grows up with three sisters, tastes the bachelor’s life for ten months and forgets his origins,” Rebecca shook her head, pretending to be disappointed, as she leafed through the pages with a smug expression.

Martha shrugged, crossing her arms. “It’s just a magazine,” she mumbled. “About cinema.”

Rebecca looked impish. “It’s a _gossip_ magazine. About Hollywood stars.”

Bucky chuffed out a laugh. Much ado about nothing. “Is that it?”

Martha mumbled something incomprehensible.

Becca jumped up on the table and crossed her ankles in a very unladylike way, dangling her legs up and down. “Sometimes _shirtless_ Hollywood stars,” she added, her grin widening.

Bucky tried not to burst into laughter and, at the same time, attempted to fight the protective older brother roar that was growing in his chest. “Martha! You _are_ too young!”

Martha looked unimpressed. “I hate you both.”

Becca grabbed Martha’s arm and dragged her close, a breezy smile coloring her lips. “Why didn’t you show me this?” she asked, conspiratorially, in that sister-y manner Bucky had never totally grasped.

The four Barnes siblings were thick as thieves, no misunderstandings. Bucky Barnes loved and cherished his sisters and he would die for them without hesitating, no questions asked. He and Becca, in particular… eleven months age difference is basically nothing, and they could understand each other with half a glance. But sometimes… sisters were sisters. Their girl bond was something that Bucky didn’t understand. He couldn’t explain it. They had grown up all together and he had certainly spent more time playing with dolls than with his train set, but every once in a while, when he watched them whispering and giggling and elbowing each other he could honestly just think: girls. It wasn’t something he ever resented them.

Bucky, Becca, Martha and Judith had their bond and Bucky and Becca had their bond and Becca, Martha and Judith had theirs. And, on the other side, even Bucky had something exclusively, completely his, something that didn’t involve his sisters, as his sisters had that all-female little fire that burnt only around them, and that thing was Steve. Bucky had Steve. He had been having Steve since he could remember. There had been a time before meeting little Steve Rogers, bruised and battered in an alley at the very edge of Red Hook, almost Park Slope, but it probably registered as extremely inconsequential in his brain because Bucky had very little memories about it. Steve had always been there, through good and bad, first punches, first crushes, first days of school. Steve was his best pal. And that was it. Simple as that. There was Steve and there was Bucky and they always came together. Two-for-one deal.

“Oh my god, look at Marlene’s curls,” Becca’s voice woke him up from his reverie; she was looking longingly at a beautiful black and white photo of Marlene Dietrich, head thrown back, looking up, perfectly styled hair in plain sight. Becca groaned, poking at one of her own hairpins. “I bet she doesn’t need to keep them up all night.”

Martha sighed wistfully; she had relaxed and was leaning against her sister’s side, chin propped on her shoulder. They turned the page. “Look how handsome Bing Crosby is,” she moaned.

Bucky raised his eyebrows and cleared his throat. Alright. Enough sisterhood. “Hey!” he waved. “Big brother still here. And someone still has to get ready for school. You know, school for fifteen-year-olds who shouldn’t think thirty-something-year-olds are attractive,” he looked pointedly at Martha, still busy gushing over a three-quarter picture of Bing Crosby in a smart tuxedo.

She ignored him and turned the page to start pining over John Trent.

“Martha,” Bucky snapped. “Get a move on, or I’m going up to ma.”

She glared at him, then left her magazine with Becca as she stomped out of the room, not so differently from her younger sister. When she disappeared up the stairs, Bucky turned towards Becca, who was still going through _Modern Screen_ as if nothing had happened.

“What.” Bucky deadpanned.

Becca raised her eyebrows, then her blue eyes. “I didn’t say a word.”

Bucky sat up on the table, shoulder bumping against Becca’s. They stayed like that for a couple of minutes, in silence. Outside, the chirping of the birds had left space to the chattering of people on the sidewalk, the roaring of engines and the rhythmic stamping of the horses. There was still no trace of Abigail. Maybe she’d gone to the market. Bucky glimpsed at the article that Becca was reading – or pretending to.

“You wanna a new nail polish?” Bucky asked, nodding towards Ganzo’s new ‘Misty tints’. _Subtle, exciting colors… and long-wearing Glazo doesn’t wear or thicken!_ There was the drawing of a fashionable woman on the side, yellow jacket thrown over a burgundy dress, looking behind her as a sharp-suited man helped her out of her coat. The drawing was pretty, all straight lines and geometric shapes. He thought about Steve with his weak lungs, moving boxes in a lousy grocery store to pay half of their rent. He would be able to draw much better advertisement if only someone gave him a chance.

“Possibly,” Becca said, looking at her pristine smoky rose manicure. After spending half his life in a basically all-women house – three sisters, one mother, one cook, one governess –, he was perfectly able to distinguish even the faintest differences in color. That came in handy when Steve’s color-blindness prevented him from recognizing and differentiating the exact shades he needed and the right tonalities. Not that Steve painted that much. Bucky had finished the excuses to buy him watercolors for that year. Well, Christmas was coming anyway. And Hanukkah.

Becca skipped a few pages and Bucky felt suddenly guilty. “Was I too harsh?” he mumbled, thinking about Martha storming off.

“Nah,” Becca pushed against his shoulder. “You treated her worse,” she smirked. “Have you already forgotten how to manage sisters in that bachelor’s dump of yours?”

Bucky pushed back and she squeaked, almost losing her balance. “Call my place a dump again and you can forget sleeping over.”

Becca stuck her tongue out at him, then smacked her lips in acknowledgment and flipped through an article about the wedding of Jeanette MacDonald and Gene Raymond, dismissing it with a disinterested hum. She didn’t even finish to turn the page that her smug grin, so much similar to Bucky’s, made a roaring comeback.

Bucky frowned, following her gaze. And he froze. So _that_ was what Becca meant when she said there were shirtless men on that magazine. A lot. Of photographs of. Shirtless. Men. Suddenly, he felt as hot and stuffy as if it were still July.

‘ _Batching it_ ’ said the title of the article – article, well, that was a euphemism since it was ninety percent shots – in a big, curvy font, printed sideways between two standing figures in bathing suits. ‘ _Santa Monica’s sands provide a bachelor’s paradise for Randolph Scott and Cary Grant_ ’.

And wasn’t that the truth.

The two pages were completely covered in photographs of the two men having a jolly good time on the beach or in the nearby vicinity. They sunbathed (‘ _The boys sprawl out for a snooze_ ’), raced each other in the water (‘ _Cary and Randy indulge in their morning aperitif of suds_ ’), ran on the shore (‘ _“It’s a dog’s trot,” explains Cary_ ’), prepared for diving (‘ _The first dip is the hardest_ ’) and exercised (‘ _Cary wouldn’t talk until Scott puts down that grisly double-headed sledge hammer of his_ ’). And all of it showing off in exceptionally tiny swimsuits. Bucky had no idea why that was striking him so much. He was in the YMCA. They swam _naked_. And yet.

Bucky opened and closed his mouth, speechless, as Becca hummed appreciatively.

No.

That was weird.

Too weird.

He shouldn’t be watching this. His _teenage sister_ shouldn’t be watching this.

“Give me that,” he grumbled, snatching the magazine from her hands, page creaking and folding. “That’s not proper.”

Becca’s perfectly drawn eyebrows shot up. “Excuse me?”

That was her dangerous tone. The suffragette tone. The tone Steve Rogers had thought her. Bucky blinked and Randolph Scott in a swimsuit suddenly appeared in his mind with Steve Rogers’ face. The shock almost killed him on the spot. What in the name of… But Becca was still there, nostrils flaring in defiance. Bucky cleared his throat and jumped down the table. He put his hands on his hips, puffed up his chest, trying to appear taller than he was. Becca hopped down as well. She crossed her arms.

“You shouldn’t… This is not what a proper lady should look at,” he shook the magazine in the air for good measure. His ears were ringing.

“Are you messing with me, Bucky?” Becca asked, a weird expression on her face. It seemed as if she didn’t know if she should laugh or call him out for his nonsense. She definitely looked ready for a fight.

Luckily, Judith and Martha chose that moment to re-enter the room, both grumpy, but ready to go.

Thank God.

“Ready?” Bucky’s voice croaked. “Good. Let’s go. See ya, Becca.” He fumbled, avoiding her half-perplexed half-aggressive stance, rushing out of the French door towards the garage, knees wobbly, head spinning as if he’d just gotten off the Cyclone.

The three siblings didn’t exchange a syllable for the whole trip.

It took Bucky two miles and a couple of kids left a school before noticing he was still clutching _Modern Screen_ in his fist.

What the hell.

Bucky’s mood didn’t improve during the day. He spent long hours doing errands for his father, chatting up undecided witnesses in a case of small-business espionage. It was something he did, from time to time – his father said that he asked because he was charming and would be able to sell ice boxes at the North Pole, but Bucky knew he still hoped he would decide to actually go to college and inherit the law firm, in the end. Well, thank God Becca was a better child than he was.

“Steve?”

He closed the door behind him, squinting to see something in the darkness of the small apartment. He flicked the lights on. No noise. Bucky sighed, hanging his hat on the hook. It was late and Steve wasn’t back yet. Bucky hoped he was working overtime, and that was saying something, but the alternative was having Steve beaten up in some alley, so. He walked past the bathtub-table and opened his bedroom’s door, taking off his jacket with practiced ease. He made sure to hang it properly, so not to wrinkle it. As he did so, his eyes fell on the crumpled magazine cropping up from the pocket. He nibbled at his lower lip and grabbed it before he could change his mind.

The latch bolt of his door squeaked but didn’t click as he pushed it, and Bucky threw the magazine on the bed, heart starting to beat faster in his chest. He took off his shoes and slumped on the mattress. It was a soft one, stuffed with feathers; his mother had insisted, and Bucky had managed to sneak one even in Steve’s room, despite his complaints. Bucky got rid of his tie and undid the first two buttons of his shirt. Methodically, he did the same with his cuffs, eyes glued to the yellow cover. When he was as comfortable as it gets, he picked up the magazine and leafed through the pages until he found the incriminating one. He took a deep breath.

It was–

Bucky wasn’t sure how to define it.

Well, stupid, was the first, rational word that came to his mind. He was around shirtless men all the time. He _boxed_ , for crying out loud. He went to the local YMCA swimming pool; he had swum naked since he was old enough to stand. And he was all but a _bigot_.

Why did this ludicrous article upset him?

He’d thought– Well, he’d thought it was because his sister had made that appreciative sound, looking at the two actors. That would make sense. Becca was eighteen but she was still his little sister. She was too young to think about _men_. Bucky didn’t even chaperone her out to dance halls yet. Church and temple balls didn’t really count. Heck, he’d chaperoned Martha at those, and Martha was _fifteen_ , a child, basically and, oh Lord, that was _Martha’s_ magazine. Bucky groaned, covering his face with the hand that wasn’t holding the periodical open. That was why he was upset, right? Because his baby sisters were reading magazines with shirtless bachelors on them.

It must be it.

His wrist flumped down against the mattress and yet again he was back at staring at the pictures. Cary Grant and Randy Scott. He had watched movies with them. Hell, he did go to see _Rocky Mountain Mystery_ twice, a couple of years before, and he had humored Becca when she’d insisted that he accompanied her and her friends to see that corny _When you are in love_ past winter. But it was just… His eyes fell on the two figures lying on deck chairs, long muscular legs sprawled.

He licked his lips. His mouth was dry.

The image on the top right showed Grant and Scott busy with calisthenics. Grant’s hands were wrapped up in boxing gloves, not unlike Bucky’s own, his shorts cutting high on the top of his thighs, his eyes focused on the punching ball, still vibrating for a hit, slightly out of focus. On the side, Scott was looking at him, an easy smile on his lips, the muscles of his arms bulging in the effort of keep the barbell up. Bucky’s eyes fell on the tagline.

> _‘Randy’s only regret is that overhead chandeliers went out with Douglas Fairbanks. “I used to be a ninety-seven pound weakling – something like Grant over here,” he confides, “until I took to answering fan mail.” Cary won’t talk until Scott puts down that grisly double-headed sledge hammer of his.’_

Bucky snorted. He really doubted that Cary Grant weighted ninety-seven pounds. He had seen him in movies. He was _tall_. But something in that sentence… _I used to be a ninety-seven pound weakling_. A shiver ran through Bucky’s spine. He remembered Steve’s stats by heart. Had too. He had lost count of how many times he had babbled them to busy nurses at the hospital. Weight: ninety-five pounds. Height: five foot four. Eyes: astigmatic. _I used to be a ninety-seven pound weakling_.

Bucky’s eyes roamed back over the exposed body of Randolph Scott; from his blond, perfectly styled hair, a lock brushing his left eyebrow, the same way that Steve’s fringe did – he could picture his long, artist’s fingers running through it. Bucky’s breath hitched on the strong lines of Scott’s biceps, protruding veins wrapping around the muscles like vines. He barely registered the fact that his left hand was unbuttoning his trousers, and he hissed; up to that moment, he hadn’t even noticed that his half-hard cock had been pressing uncomfortably against the seam of his pants. He rubbed the heel of his hand against it. He stifled a groan, then blinked repeatedly, feverishly looking for something on the glossy pages. And he found it. Scott’s back was arched in tension, chest out: Bucky could count every single one of his ribs, could recognize the thick lines of his ribcage framing his pectorals. His eyelids fluttered shut, as he sneaked his hand inside his underpants.

Prompted by some external, blasphemous force, his traitorous brain easily provided countless images of Steve Rogers taking off his shirt, washing up quickly in the kitchen sink, goosebumps on his pale shoulders, sitting stubbornly in the shadow on the beach at Coney Island, nose buried in one of those warfare books he liked so much, all folded up to avoid being watched. A moan slipped out despite his best efforts, as his fingers circled the tip of his dick. He forced himself to open his eyes, ragged breaths coming out sharply, following the rhythm of his hips thrusting blindly into his fist.

Suddenly, the sense of awareness about what he had in front of his eyes hit him like a brick: Cary Grant – dark curls, stylishly slicked on one side, cheeky smile, cleft on his chin, _boxing_ ; Randolph Scott – blond, once skinny and still pretty slim, fair skin, long lean legs. _Batching it_. He ran a thumb over his slit, his palm hot against his skin, sweat beading his forehead, facilitating the jerky movements of his wrist. ‘ _Randy displays a physique that should a n s w e r maiden’s prayers_.’ He imagined Steve shirtless, balancing a barbell over his shoulders. He whimpered. Fuck, he was clo–

“Buck? You home?”

Bucky froze. His eyes went wide when he noticed that his door was ajar, a blade of light cutting through the room.

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.

He yanked his hand out of his briefs and jumped up, then shoved the magazine under his pillow. The bedroom door creaked, and he barely managed to pull his still half-decent shirt out to haphazardly cover his open fly – and his still stiff shame – when Steve peeked inside.

“Hey, you deaf all of a sudden?” he asked, bemused.

The light from the kitchen blinded him.

“It would make two of us,” Bucky managed, trying not to seem too much out of breath.

Steve rolled his eyes and moved to go back in the kitchen, but Bucky’s eyes had quickly adapted to the newfound luminosity and he could now see Steve’s face in all its bruised glory. Bucky took one second to notice that– “A split lip? Goddammit, Steve.”

Steve huffed, trying to shut the door, but Bucky was faster, and he followed him in the kitchen. “Let me…”

Steve grumbled his displeasure when Bucky tried to grab his chin to assess the damage, every single funny thought completely out of his mind.

“It’s nothing, come on,” he slapped his wrist, moving towards the interior windows to his room.

“Rogers,” Bucky growled, on the warpath, but then stopped abruptly, taking in a deep breath.

His heart was back to a steady rhythm, the kitchen light was not going to reveal anything inappropriate. Bucky buttoned his trousers in the most discreet way possible, before moving to the sink, quickly washing his hands – God, his left was still sweaty and sticky and… He shook his head and wet a towel for good measure.

“Rogers, come here. I already dealt with three teenagers today, I’m not afraid to deal with a fourth.”

Steve flipped him off through one of the fake windows.

Bucky rolled his eyes and covered the small distance, trying to get to Steve’s mouth to at least wipe away the crusted blood. “What happened this time?” he asked, when he finally managed to corner Steve between the dresser and the easel.

Steve shrugged.

Bucky sighed and kept brushing the wet cloth against the corner of his lips, concern taking over every single possible second thought. Not that he had any. At all.

“It was one of those kids at the Navy Yard,” Steve said out of the blue, when Bucky had finally resigned himself at spending the rest of the night wondering which kind of thug he wanted to shoot at for hurting Steve.

He turned to the direction in which the voice had come, which happened to be, to nobody’s surprise, Steve’s room, still wringing the stained towel in the sink. Steve was leaning against the threshold, hands deep in his pockets.

“What kids? What were you doing at the docks?”

Steve raised a shoulder. “Delivery,” he said, evasively. “And you know which kids,” he looked at Bucky with a pointed look and Bucky felt his neck getting hot, mind going back at the rumpled magazine under his pillow.

“A rent boy hit you?” Bucky blurted out before he could stop himself, voice higher than expected.

“No!” Steve’s eyes widened in shock, splotches of color covering his cheeks. “God, Bucky, no,” he crossed his arms and raised his chin defiantly. “Coupla sailors were getting handsy. He kept shouting he didn’t want to,” he hesitated and, finally, avoided Bucky’s gaze. “Couldn’t just let them… well.”

Bucky closed the tap, warmth spreading in his chest. He let himself linger over the sink, a smile determinately pushing at the corner of his lips. And wasn’t that just textbook Steve Rogers? Throwing himself in fights he couldn’t win to defend people whom the rest of the world spit on? Sweet baby Jesus, only Steve Rogers could defend the honor of a hooker. Bucky shook his head and turned towards him, smiled a lopsided smile. “Nah,” he agreed. “You couldn’t.”

Steve smiled back, forehead free of the usual pinch between his eyebrows, all pale skin and split lips. Bucky felt something strange at the bottom of his stomach. The Catholic church on the other side of the road struck nine. Oh, well, must have been hunger, then. Nothing easier. He stared as Steve walked to the pantry and started putting some leftovers from the grocery store inside.

“Mr. Farinelli let me bring home some stuff,” he stated the obvious, checking the apples one by one, keeping out the more battered. “Noodles with prunes?”

Bucky made a face. “You spoil me rotten, Rogers.”

Steve shoved him and Bucky shoved him back and, as if that strange day was nothing, all was normal again.

Except it wasn’t.

Later that night, Bucky was lying on his back, eyes fixed on the ceiling, hyperaware that every time he moved his head, the magazine crumpled up, squeaking and crunching. It was torture. And yet, he couldn’t find the courage to move it. He was scared that if he had it in his hands, even for just a second, he would end up on that page again and– A shiver ran down his spine at the thought.

Exactly. That.

Now, Bucky Barnes wasn’t a saint. He was a decent half-Christian and he was a decent half-Jew and he had spent most of his life jumping from one church or temple to the other like a pinball – Shabbat with his father, Sunday school with his mother, sometimes even weird festivities like the Immaculate Conception with Steve and Sarah Rogers. So, he had had his fair share of religion induced culture of suppression. But probably this eclectic upbringing had screwed up something in some basic concept. Like, you know, the _You shall not lie with a male as with a woman_ part. Well. Three religions and everyone agreed on that. Wasn’t that just swell?

And it was not as if Bucky had ever… But he’d been living in Brooklyn Heights for a year now, and his family had been living in neighboring Park Slope since he could remember. And he didn’t know if it was the end of Prohibition or whatever, but queers and _temperamental_ _individuals_ were everywhere. They were his neighbors and the people with whom he shared a beer and a laughter at the public houses when he fancied it; they were the strays at the docks and the sailors who cruised him when he ended up at the Navy Yard for whatever reason.

He didn’t… Being a boxer, he had lived in male camaraderie for years with his peers. Some of them were from boarding schools, visiting family during summer, playing a few matches, spending some time at the local YMCA because brothers or cousins were there. He knew what happened behind closed doors when they traveled to Massachusetts of Pennsylvania for regional championships. Everybody did it. He had done it. Quietly jerking off, fifteen years old and crumped up in small hotel rooms. It felt better if it was someone else doing it, that’s all.

But at the end of the day, Bucky knew that he wasn’t a fairy. He wasn’t one of those guys who put on wigs and sang in dresses with deep voices at the drag balls in Sands Street. He had never touched himself thinking about being bent or anything.

 _You don’t even think about pretty girls, though_ , a vicious voice supplied.

Yeah, that didn’t mean anything. He was respectful, that’s all. He was a gentleman. It wasn’t gallant to think about girls that way. They weren’t just pieces of meat for him to…

_And Steve is?_

Bucky groaned, covering his face with his hands, magazine crunching under his pillow. What was happening to him? He had never thought about Steve that way. Not even when the other boys called him names and slurs because he was small and skinny. Bucky had defended him for years against that kind of people. And if he jerked off imagining Steve doing calisthenics, was he really better than them?

“It was an accident,” he promised the ceiling.

He turned on one side and the magazine under the pillow crunched.

“It won’t happen again.”

It happened again.

It wasn’t planned. It didn’t even involve the goddamned magazine, which still laid crumpled under his pillow. Bucky just wanted a glass of water.

It was the middle of the night, and he had just woken up from one of those strange dreams you cannot really put your finger on – there was a purple alien and a man in a metal suit; a talking raccoon, perhaps? He shook his head and kicked the cover away, padding to the kitchen and scratching his growing stubble. He was about to open the tap when a stifled moan froze him on the spot. He turned to the curtain that Steve drew at night to divide the kitchen from his personal space. He must have misheard. He leaned over the sink, and he had just brushed the brass with his thumb when it happened again: a grunt, then short, ragged breaths.

Steve was…

Ah, fuck.

Bucky closed his eyes. He had to get back to his room, give the guy some privacy, some… But he was nailed on the spot, he couldn’t move. And then Steve whimpered again, and Bucky felt as if all the blood in his body had just rushed to his groin; every inch of his skin was covered in goosebumps, tense and hypersensitive. There was an unnatural silence: no howling of defective water pipes, no stray dogs barking, no drunks staggering back home, singing filthy songs. It was just him, and Steve, and the soft rustling of sheets. His hand slipped under the hem of his pajama pants when another soft moan broke the silence.

Bucky didn’t have to imagine, this time. He had watched Steve lay in bed a thousand times. He knew how he would look, on his back, one leg propped up, tenting the almost threadbare blanket that covered him. Steve would make space for it, not like Bucky, folded on himself with a hand down in pants like a perv in a public park. He was certainly taking his sweet time, chuffed breaths and… fingers exploring, maybe, drawing paths on the milky skin of his thighs. He would press his fingertips against his pulse points, where the upper part of his thigh formed a crease, connecting to his groin, against his nerves, taut and stretched.

A whine reached him from beyond the curtain and Bucky trapped his lips between his teeth, the ring of his fingers running roughly up and down his prick. He could see Steve in his mind, long, girly eyelashes fluttering, short-cut nails scratching the sensitive tuft of chestnut hair around the base of his cock. In a dangerous place in the back of Bucky’s head, Steve’s other hand traveled south, cupping his balls, massaging the thin sack with artist’s fingers, and maybe even...

Steve’s breath hitched, mere meters from the poor excuse of a man that Bucky was in that moment, leaning against the kitchen sink, cool stone pressing against his buttocks; it wasn’t the wheezing of his asthma, though, but the breathless euphoria of pleasure. His movements were getting more frantic, Bucky could hear the increasing rustling of sheets, his heart was going to explode, pumping blood in his veins, rushing to his rock-hard dick. He tried to picture Steve’s face, his long nose, the frown on his forehead, maybe his teeth sinking in his lower lip to stifle the moans, as he pumped his uncut cock in his fist, fingertips indulging on the tip, exploring the sensitive spot just underneath his foreskin…

Hot spurts of come covered Bucky’s fingers, thick and sticky against his skin. He sunk his teeth in the back of his other hand, tears prickling at the corners of his eyes in the effort not to make even the faintest noise. He squeezed his eyes, sight coming back in splotches. He felt dizzy. His ears were ringing. He stumbled to his room before he could find out if Steve had completed his own personal mission. When he fell on the mattress, paper crunched under the pillow.

Fuck.

*

“I can’t believe you are making me do this,” Bucky muttered, tying a bow on his lower back, checking that his shirt and pants were sufficiently covered.

“Less whining, more working,” Becca retorted, shoving a rolling pin in his hands. “Look at Steve.”

“Steve’s a good Christian boy,” Bucky scowled, and Steve snorted from the other side of the table. He was already kneading the dough, knuckles pressing in the soft mixture of eggs, flour, and sugar. They had been summoned to the Barnes’ household to bake cookies for the small celebration that the church was organizing for the Feast of the Cross, the following day after mass. “We’re half-Jew, we should be spared this parish parties bull– ”

“Watch your blasphemous mouth, James Buchanan!”

Appearing out of thin air, Winnifred Barnes slapped him on the back of his head and Bucky flinched in pain, raising a hand to rub his nape and ending up spreading flour all over his perfectly styled hair. He bit his tongue to avoid another curse. Steve – the traitor facing the door – was snickering, bony shoulders shaking from silent laughter, and accepted Winnie’s kiss on the cheek with dignified fondness.

“Good morning, Mrs. Barnes.”

“Good morning, Steve, dear,” she chirped, all sugar.

Bucky glowered. “You couldn’t tell me she was behind me, could you? And you call yourself my best friend.”

Steve shrugged and winked, all smug, and Bucky’s stomach did a funny thing. Must be hunger. It was Shabbat and he had had breakfast at six.

Winnie took another apron from a small closet near the door and put it on with care, very careful not to ruin her auburn locks up in a complicated hairdo. She had a luncheon in the afternoon with some friends and she always made an effort to be impeccable. Some called it vanity, Bucky liked to call it self-respect and it was something he and his mother had in common. He looked at her with a half-smile, while she broke a couple of eggs in a bowl and added a generous quantity of chestnut flour. As it befitted her social status, she didn’t cook often – they had Abigail for that – but she usually helped out for big celebrations and whenever they were asked to do something for the church or for the temple. It was a way for giving back, Bucky reckoned.

“Just assume I’m always behind you, my darling,” Winnie said, pleasantly enough, and Steve’s started laughing again, for Bucky’s utmost displeasure – lately, his insides had started training for the Olympics every time Steve laughed, or smiled, or _breathed_ , for God’s sake.

“Where are Judy and Martha, by the way?” Bucky asked, training his gaze on the ready dough he was supposed to roll out.

Becca lifted her eyes to the ceiling, as if to catch a glimpse of them through the plaster. “They should be already here,” she mumbled, running the back of her hand against her forehead to push aside some rebellious strands of hair and leaving there a trace of white powder. “I’ll go upstairs to call them,” she wiped her hands in her apron and marched out of the room with a no-nonsense attitude.

“Well,” Bucky said. “I am clearly not the only one feeling Jew today. It is Shabbat after all.”

Winnie threw a wet dishcloth in his general direction and Bucky let out a very manly squeak when it landed right on his shoulder with a splat. Steve burst into the umpteenth fit of laughter.

Becca returned after a couple of minutes, right when Bucky had just finished with his first batch of dough and was carefully placing the most appropriate cookie cutters beside it, so to leave his younger sisters the easy job – cutting the soon-to-be biscuits and place them on a tray. He wasn’t a complete monster.

Judith greeted him with a kiss on the cheek, while Steve received a small nod and a full-face blush. He waved awkwardly in response. Bucky bit the inside of his cheek to avoid teasing them.

“Where’s Martha?” Steve asked after a second, eyebrows piercing in confusion.

“Oh, she’s still upset with Bucky. Said she won’t come down until you go up apologizing,” Becca said casually. “Something that I would appreciate, too, you know,” she added, petulantly.

Winnifred looked from one child to the other, “What did you do to your sister, James?” she asked, with the same tone that she had used for years when he busted him quarreling with the girls. If she weren’t kneading dough, Bucky was pretty sure her arms would be crossed over her chest.

Bucky couldn’t help the blush that run to his cheeks at the thought of the culprit magazine still stashed under his pillow in his apartment. He could feel Steve’s confused gaze on him too, and he avoided it with special care. He could not look at him.

“Nothing,” he mumbled. “And there’s nothing to apologize for, Becca,” he added, petulantly. “I was right.”

She raised her chin in defiance, eyes narrowing. “Oh, were you, James Buchanan?”

They glared at each other and proceeded to have the kind of silent argument only siblings can have, all raised eyebrows and meaningful looks. And Becca, oh Becca was really good at making him feel guilty with only an upturned corner of her lips and a flaring scowl artfully painted on her heart-shaped face.

“Fine,” Bucky yielded, grinding his teeth, then retrieved the wet towel and wiped his hands. “I’ll talk to her,” he declared, purposefully avoiding Steve’s inquisitive glance, and stalked out of the room, towards the stairs.

“And what do you say to me?” Becca called out, raising her voice.

“Cannot say a thing, Becca,” Bucky growled, without turning back. “Ma’s behind me.”

Martha shared her room with Judith, as Bucky had shared with Becca for years. When Bucky had moved out, ten months before, things hadn’t changed, mostly because Becca had insisted that being the oldest, she now deserved her space. Mom had allowed it, mostly because she was going to finish her senior year and move to college soon anyway, and because, Bucky suspected, she still hoped that her baby boy would return to the nest at some point. Now that Becca had almost packed everything up for Barnard, Martha was eyeing their room with greedy desire, and, Bucky was pretty sure of it, she was definitely buttering up father to obtain it as soon as Becca’s stepped out of the door. Bucky could almost hear her innocent ‘Of course I will bunk up back with Judy when Becca and Bucky’re over’ from Brooklyn Heights.

But until then.

“Knock, knock,” Bucky sing-sang, pushing slightly the door which Becca had left ajar.

Martha was sitting on the bed, back propped against the cushions, face stubbornly sunk in a book.

“Can I come in?” he asked, leaning against the threshold with his arms crossed.

She didn’t answer and Bucky rolled his eyes. “Well, as they say, ‘Silence gives consent’,” he declared, stepping in and closing the door behind him.

Martha didn’t show any sign of recognition and Bucky walked to her bed, sitting on the edge and hooking his fingers on the crease of the book, pushing it downwards. “You know, it would be more believable if it weren’t upside down.”

Martha scowled and it was so similar and so different from Becca’s fiery rage that Bucky couldn’t help but smile. Becca and Martha had the same colors – Winnifred’s auburn locks and George’s grey eyes – but where Becca was soft and round in her corners, Martha was all sharp jawline and pronounced cheekbones, not different from Bucky. She was fast and quiet, an ace in her school’s athletics team, and she preferred to think before speaking, choosing the witty phlegm of intellect over the passionate talkativeness of her sister. Martha, Bucky was sure of it, was going to freeze hell in court, if she chose that path.

“Are you here to apologize?” she asked, apparently neutral, but didn’t slacken the hold on her book.

“I didn’t even know you were still upset with me.”

Martha’s glare had ‘idiot’ plastered all over it. Right. Teenagers.

Bucky sighed. “I’m sorry. I just…” he shrugged. “I’m your older brother, you know? It’s my job to look out for you.”

Martha closed the book and let it rest on her bent knees. “It’s just a magazine, Bucky. We see plenty boys in bathing suits when we go to Coney Island,” she was blushing, but her voice didn’t falter. “I can appreciate when a boy is handsome,” she added, cheeks red as tomatoes, but a certain stubborn defiance in her stance.

“I guess you can,” Bucky said, quietly, because that was it, wasn’t it? He had been doing the same since he was her age, didn’t he? Looking at girls, looking at boys, be curious. He cleared his throat, feeling his own blush spread. It was just… strange, thinking that a girl could do the same, his own _sister_. It was probably retrograde of him to think so. Or maybe just… She was his _baby sister_ , come on. _Cut me some slack, progressive conscience_.

Martha grumbled, fiddling with the hem of her blouse, where a thread needed cutting.

Bucky swallowed. “So, uhm, Cary Grant, uh?”

One of the pillows hit him on the side of his head and with a yell and a laughter he automatically grabbed one for himself, answering blow for blow. After a long and vicious fight, he said uncle and slumped down on the bed, Martha’s heels pressing against his side.

“You’re the worst,” she moaned. “And by the way, Randy Scott is way more handsome. If I could marry one of them, I’d choose him.”

Bucky groaned, covering his face with one hand, because _Yeah, sis, I get it_. He hoped she mistook his embarrassment over the fact that he had actively jerked off over Randy Scott – yeah, Randy Scott, sure – for awkwardness due to the fact that his little sister was talking to him about gorgeous Hollywood actors. Martha giggled and kicked him.

“I don’t think they’ll stay single for much longer, though,” she added, and now Bucky knew that she was insisting on the topic for the mere fact that it made him uncomfortable.

He decided to get along with it. “Why not?”

Martha shrugged. “Cary Grant was married for a while, a couple of years ago. He went back to live with Randy after she broke it off, though.”

Bucky’s heart rate accelerated. “They were living together before?”

Martha huffed. “Oh yeah, since forever basically.”

Forever, in fifteen-year-olds years – Bucky quickly did his math – was at least three years. He bit on his lower lip, blood rushing furiously in his veins.

“In that place there? That beach house?” the questions came out of his mouth before he could stop himself.

“Uh-uh,” there was no suspicion in Martha’s voice, she didn’t ask why he was so curious.

She actually seemed pretty cheerful about the fact that Bucky was asking about something she was interested in, even if it was stupid gossip. It wasn’t that they hadn’t things in common, but five years difference weren’t a joke, when you are children, and despite their long rants on space adventure books, Bucky and Martha never really managed to bridge the age gap.

“They call it Bachelor’s Hall,” she giggled. “There were lots of photos in _Screenland_ , last year,”

Bucky didn’t have to ask what that was or how she’d gotten her hands on that, since he perfectly remembered Becca’s coquettish expression as she looked at the photos. He was ready to bet that it wasn’t the first Hollywood gossip magazine that had been smuggled in the house.

“They washed the dishes together and had breakfast together and trained together. Very domestic. Oh, also, there was a cute one with them playing the piano and singing. They also have a dog.”

Bucky’s heart was going to explode. It felt dangerously close to home. “Yeah?”

“Yeah!” she confirmed, clueless. “I’m sure Becca has that number somewhere. They were really handsome and fashionable,” a pause. “I want a dog, too,” she added as an afterthought.

Bucky kept staring at the ceiling, cheeks on fire and ears ringing. “Ask dad,” he answered automatically.

She hummed, not particularly interested. “Anyway. We should probably go help. Ma will be very annoyed.”

Go help. Go downstairs. It meant facing Steve. Steve who was baking with his family, laughing and chatting, like he had done almost every single minute since they met each other at six years old. Steve, with whom he lived in their very own Bachelor’s Hall, which was not a mansion on the beach in Santa Monica, but a tenement in Brooklyn Heights. Steve with whom he paid rent and washed dishes and cooked dinner and bickered about his habit of leaving his sketches and his charcoals everywhere. _Very domestic,_ Martha had said.

She was almost at the door when Bucky stopped her. “Hey,” he said, heart in his throat. She turned, hair a bit messy because of the pillow fight. “Grant was married, right?” he asked.

She wrinkled her nose. “Yes. For, like, a year, I guess? But it was a messy thing, you know, all that Hollywood drama,” she shrugged. “They married in England, I think, I remember Becca showing me her dress, it was pretty. Randy wasn’t there to be best man though,” she furrowed her eyebrows. “He traveled to England with Cary but he didn’t stay for the wedding. Odd right?”

Bucky’s mouth had gone dry. “Odd,” he agreed, his voice cracking.

Martha opened the door. “You comin’?”

“Yeah, you go. I’ll be right behind you,” he said, with what he hoped was a carefree smile.

She lifted a corner of her lips, a bit puzzled, but she didn’t press and turned her back on him and exited the room. When the soft rhythm of her steps on the wooden floor faded, Bucky jumped on his feet and, before he could question his actions, he was in his old room, feverishly leafing through Becca’s old schoolbooks and dictionaries and anything boring that could hide issues of forbidden magazines.

His mind was a whirlwind of emotions, he didn’t know what to do, he didn’t know what to feel. Fragments of the conversation he had with Martha kept coming back at him like old records. Grant’s wife had broken off the marriage, Scott left England before the wedding and wasn’t the best man, Grant and Scott living together for years and years, the picture of domestic bliss. Was it possible that they were…?

He basically yanked off one of Becca’s nightstand’s drawers and his heart missed a beat when he noticed that the bottom of the piece of furniture was missing and a small pile of magazines were hidden under a wobbly slat. He started turning the pages so quickly and roughly that they kept tearing up in the corners.

Finally, at the third attempt, he found what he was looking for. The photos were numerous, and Bucky’s hands shook as he swallowed a lump in his throat. There was one of the two men washing the dishes, as Martha had said, white aprons, not so different from what he and Steve were wearing in that moment, on, and their faces caught in weird expressions, as if they were talking when the photographer had taken the shot. Cary Grant was about to pass a dessert dish or something small – Bucky couldn’t see well – to Scott, who was wiping a bigger, ceramic one with a towel. Bucky opened and closed his mouth. It was so familiar. They did the same. He washed and Steve dried because Bucky didn’t want him to have his hands wet for a long time, he was too scared he could get a cold, and cold could become bronchitis and bronchitis pneumonia and– He shook his head, inhaling deeply.

The one with the dog was very small, tucked in the left end corner. Scott and Grant were looking for something in the pantry and the small white mutt had its front paws propped on the lowest shelf. Bucky half-smiled. He wondered what it would be like, having a dog at home. He tried to imagine Steve playing with it, in the same way he had played with the countless puppies that whimpered for scraps around his old apartment building. They didn’t even have a lawn though, even a small dog would suffer in their shoebox of apartment. Yeah, well, wishful thinking.

Another photo attracted his attention: Scott was reading a book, sitting on a cozy-looking armchair, while Grant lied sprawled at his feet, head propped on a pillow and eyes trained on what looked like a script. Bucky blinked, overwhelmed. How many evenings did they spend like this? How many times Steve had curled up in the lopsided armchair that he had brought from the place in which he had stayed with his ma for years? It was worn out and one leg was missing, substituted by a short stack of books, and Steve was completely in love with it. So, he nested there, legs propped up, a sketchbook in his hands, and Bucky just lied a blanket on the floor, stole the pillow from Steve’s bed and buried his nose in a book, engrossed in tales of outer space. It was so achingly familiar it was almost painful to look.

But it didn’t mean… it didn’t… he and Steve were friends. Best pals. Nothing had ever happened between them, not even in the years in which Bucky had… well, experimented with his peers during YMCA away games. Steve wasn’t in the YMCA. Steve wasn’t fit for any sport, no matter how hard he tried. His asthma prevented him from doing much more than walking, most of the time. But in that moment, half squished between the wall and Becca’s bed, Bucky thought, _What if?_ What if Steve had been able to join the YMCA? What if he had come to those trips to Pennsylvania and Massachusetts and… would they have ended up sharing a room? Would they have ended up curled in a bed together, taking care of each other’s business? Bucky gaped, his head was spinning. He wanted to. He wanted it to have happened. He wanted it to happen. But he also wanted what they already had. The domesticity. The familiarity. Their own Bachelor’s Hall, only… he didn’t want it to be a Bachelor’s Hall. He wanted it to be their home.

And that was it.

“Oh my God,” he mouthed, astounded. “I am queer. I am queer for Steve.”

Bucky walked downstairs ten minutes after his mind-blowing realization.

And life had gone on.

Judy was pressing a daisy-shaped cookie cutter against newly rolled out dough, Rebecca and his mom were kneading the dough while chattering about this and that and Martha was washing the bowls and trays they didn’t need anymore. But Bucky’s eyes found Steve automatically: he was still in the same spot in which he had left him, arms covered in flour up to his elbows and the usual, annoying fringe falling over his eyes. He kept pushing it back, spreading icing on his forehead.

Bucky wanted to taste his skin.

Fuck, this was bad. This was so bad.

“Already decorating?” he asked, gathering enough courage to walk in.

“Oh, the prodigal son returns!” Becca interrupted her conversation to say.

“Are you okay, James?” Winnie asked, eyebrows furrowed in concern.

Bucky blinked and looked at Martha questioningly. She shrugged. “You were as white as a sheet. I thought you weren’t feeling well when you didn’t follow me.”

Thank God for younger sisters.

“Oh, uh, yeah. Yeah. I was feeling a bit dizzy, that’s all. I’m fine,” he faked his best reassuring smile and walked around the table, stopping beside Steve and reaching out for the bowl of icing. Steve hit his outstretched hand with a wooden spoon.

“Hey!” Bucky protested. “I was ill.”

“And this icing isn’t for you,” Steve said.

“You are awful at taking care of me, Rogers,” the words left his mouth against his will, rolling out one after the other like a landslide.

Steve’s ears took a lovely strawberry color.

Bucky wanted to press his lips against his lobe to find out how warm they were.

“Make yourself useful,” Steve muttered, shoving a frosting bag into his hands.

They started working and Bucky appreciated the continuous chitchat of his sisters and his mother, their bickering, their gossipy stories about the quality of the meat at the grocery store, their quarrels about which seamstress was better at fixing hems, the infinite number of suitcases that Rebecca was thinking to bring with her on the other side of the bridge and how on Earth were they going to fit into the car if they were all supposed to accompany her for her first day of college? Steve, Bucky noticed, was as quiet as he was, focused on his elaborate decorations which looked extremely ornate in comparison to Bucky’s shaky lines and misshapen dots. He was awfully good and Bucky was… oh God, Bucky was totally smitten with him.

How hadn’t he known before? How was it even possible that he never realized? What was he going to do now?

Well, nothing was the obvious answer. Nothing was the right answer.

He knew that nothing good came from that sort of feelings. He knew how queer people were considered. And after all, he didn’t even know if Steve… No, Steve wasn’t like that. Steve liked girls, it was just that girls were too dumb and superficial to see that. To see what a great guy Steve was. But he… of course he liked girls.

“Bucky? You are drowning the biscuit.”

Bucky flinched and noticed that he had squeezed the icing bag so much that half of its contents were now completely spilled on the wooden table.

“Fuck,” he swore.

“James B– !”

“ –Buchanan, language! Yeah, I know, I know, ma, sorry,” he wiped the mess with the hem of his apron and ran to the sink, washing it away and then leaning against he told stone countertop, head hunched between his shoulders. He took two deep breaths.

He was a complete disaster.

“Bucky, hey Buck.”

He didn’t answer. Steve’s hand rubbed gently between his shoulder blades.

“Are you okay, pal?”

“Yeah, I’m just… sorry,” he blinked furiously, trying to push back his overwhelming feelings. “I ruined your biscuit.”

He could hear his sisters talk in low, hushed tones, clearly concerned.

Steve smiled. “There are plenty more. We can go home if you don’t feel…”

Home.

Their bachelor’s apartment.

Panic flooded into him. “No.” he answered, quickly. “No, we should stay. Finish helping. Stay for lunch too,” he turned towards the room. “Hey Martha, is the Presbyterian church still doing that afternoon thing you were talking about the other week?”

Martha blinked, surprised. Bucky had no idea how he actually remembered. He hated church dances.

“Yeah?” she said, confused. “But you said– ”

“I’ll chaperone you,” he cut her off. “We should all go. Have some fun.”

Steve was looking at him as if he was really worried for his mental health. Bucky was really worried for his mental health.

“Yes, okay, I guess,” she seemed genuinely bedazzled. Was he such an awful brother than he didn’t chaperone his sisters to church dances enough? When was the last time he did?

“Can I come?” Judith chirped, clearly thrilled at the mere possibility of having chance at dancing with Steve.

“Yes,” Bucky said immediately, mentally apologizing to her sisters’ feet in advance. Steve was just terrible. He had tried teaching him, he had tried for months; painfully long months desperately attempting to work on his coordination and on the movements of his arms and on his footwork. He had followed for him and he had led him and he had shown everything he could do, but Steve was totally, terribly awful at dancing. Now, Bucky wondered if his stubborn attempts had always been only an excuse to wrap an arm around Steve’s waist and feel the pressure of his fingertips when he held his hand to guide him.

“Now, hold your horses, James,” Winnifred intervened. “We’ll ask your father as soon as he comes back from the temple.”

Bucky nodded and licked his lips and went back to his icing, head spinning and a quite worried best friend by his side. He could postpone it for hours, but, in the end, he would have to go back home with Steve. And God, how he dreaded it.

*

“I can’t believe you are going to school in _Queens_.”

Steve groaned, bumping Bucky’s shoulder. “Can you stop repeating that?”

Bucky stayed silent for a second, then he couldn’t help the smug smile rising on his lips. “Will it change your accent? Will you become a _farmer_?”

Steve elbowed him in the ribs, and God if he had sharp elbows. “There are no more farms in Queens.”

“Sure not, pal.”

Steve glared at him and Bucky snickered. They stayed silent for a while, Steve clutching at the tattered briefcase with his portfolio, knuckles white against the worn leather. The trolley made the buckles tingle. Bucky pushed against his shoulder. “Hey,” he said.

“What.”

“Nothin’,” Bucky raised the corner of his lip. “You’re gonna be alrite,” he exaggerated the Brooklyn drawl to make Steve smile and something alive and satisfied celebrated at the bottom of his belly when he succeeded, even if it was short-lived.

“I dunno,” Steve sighed after a second. “I should employ my time better. Find a full-time job.”

Bucky rolled his eyes because he had had to listen to that nonsense all spring and summer since Steve had been accepted into Auburndale with a partial scholarship and a personal letter from his future Professor of Anatomy and Drawing which said that he looked forward to working with him.

“Steve, you are good. They wouldn’t have accepted you, if you weren’t. And come on, you are going to college!” He nudged his knee. “Plenty new people. Plenty new pretty girls.”

Steve chuffed out a sarcastic laughter.

“Stop it. You are a fine fella. I am sure you’ll find some edgy communist she-sculptor to change the world with.”

At the world ‘communist’ a woman on the other side of the carriage threw them a sideways glance, clearly far from sharing such a radical political view. Bucky gave her his most charming good boy smile.

“Whatever you say, Buck,” Steve mumbled, still brooding.

Bucky sighed. He couldn’t see Steve so blue, not on his first day of college. He was supposed to be happy, excited. Becca had been thrilled, popping up and down as a firecracker for the days leading up to her moving to Barnard and so ecstatic the very first day that Bucky’d thought she’d lost the ability to speak. Until she had found her old friend Mina and rushed towards the flock of freshmen that were crowding the entrance hall, barely sparing a wave for her big brother that had challenged the Manhattan traffic to escort her to her first day of University.

“Steve,” he called and when he barely acknowledged him, he poked his right side, making him squeak and turn, annoyed.

“ _What?_ ”

“Why the long face? You love art. Your part-time job pays half the rent and you know you don’t have to worry for the bills. I got it covered.”

That didn’t seem to do the trick.

“Yes, with your college money,” Steve sassed back.

Bucky had lost count of how many times they had the same conversation. It was exhausting. “Yeah, well, I ain’t going to college, am I? You and Becks have the smarts, little old me has the looks. We all have to bear our crosses.”

Steve raised an eyebrow. “You are a Jew.”

“ _And_ a very good Christian,” Bucky made the sign of the cross with the most stoic expression ever.

Steve snorted. “Quit being blasphemous.”

“Wouldn’t dare.”

The silence that fell was infinitely more comfortable than before. They looked out of the window for a while, as Brooklyn morphed into Queens with an ease that felt borderline insulting for two Brooklyn boys like them. There should have been a sign, a thick red line, big posters. It felt a bit anticlimactic like that.

“It’s not just money,” Steve said quietly after a while, as they crossed from Forest Hill to Briarwood.

Bucky glanced at him, curious, but didn’t press.

“I, ah, school kinda sucked since you graduated,” he went on, slowly, eyes still stubbornly fixed on the outside. “You know, not a great senior year with you gone and ma… well,” he cleared his throat and Bucky felt the almost irresistible desire to grab his hand. He shifted in the seat instead, and squeezed his shoulder.

“I guess I’m a bit worried because you won’t be there,” he shrugged, like it wasn’t a big deal. “And when you ain’t there, school is not that great.”

Bucky breathed out from his nose, trying to push back the warmth that was crawling everywhere in his body, from the center of his chest to every extremity. It was the same sensation that aroused when he dipped into the bathtub full of boiled water.

“Steve,” he said, but he didn’t turn. His cheeks were splotched with red, and Bucky knew that this was huge for Steve – Steve who bottled up every single thing, Steve who pretended not to need anything and anyone, to be perfectly able to get by on his own.

Bucky shook him, thumb digging in his collarbone, and when, finally, Steve turned, probably to snarl some snarky reproach, Bucky caught him in a headlock, chin pressed against the top of his head, Steve’s bony shoulder hitting his sternum uncomfortably. He squeaked his protests, jabbing him in his side. “You’re a punk.” Bucky declared and he shook him once more, before letting him go.

Steve scowled at him, lips pursed in annoyance. “Jerk.”

“Steve, sweet Jesus, I will take classes with you,” Bucky said, as if it was the easiest thing in the world.

And it was. He could do it. It wasn’t as if he had a real job – boxing wasn’t a real job, it was just training and throw punches and win some stupid games. And working seldom with his dad like any silver spoon in the world, well. He wasn’t too keen on that anyway.

Steve looked at him with a skeptical expression. “Bucky, you can’t even hold a pencil.”

Bucky shrugged. “So what? You will do shit like Art Theory, or something, right?”

Steve crossed his arms. “Yeah, but it’s college. You cannot just take random classes.”

Bucky scowled, then mirrored his position. “I’ll think of something,” he muttered.

*

But for the first time in his life, James Buchanan Barnes didn’t get something he wanted.

He tried to charm his way in, he tried to bribe his way in, he also briefly considered to model for Life Sketch Classes, but then rejected the idea because he wasn’t sure he could be professional if he ended up in a classroom where Steve Rogers would observe him for hours naked as the day he was born. And he wanted very much not to sport an erection in a Life Sketch Class at Auburndale Art School, Qu-fucking-eens.

So, he failed.

Thing was, it didn’t seem such a hardship for Steve to go to class, after the first few days. Every evening, he came home more enthusiastic, chattering like a machine gun, moving his hands in excitement, stumbling on his words, telling him about this project and that Professor and showing him sketches and asking him his opinion on points of color of which he couldn’t see the difference because of his color-blindness.

He was happy.

And Bucky was more and more screwed.

He had tried. He had tried hard. He went out with girls. He brought them dancing anywhere they wanted, he impressed them with his father’s car, he drove them to Harlem to the fanciest and more fashionable dance halls. He chose witty girls, fun and clever. He chose them, thinking: _This one I could court_. But nothing ever worked. He ended up in the gym more often, training for the next local tournament, training for the YMCA championship that was approaching, punching the bag as hard as he could, as precisely as he could, hitting his opponents with fast and quick movements, precise hooks, elaborate ones, moves he needed to think about, to work on to make them perfect. He went to political rallies with Steve, he did little jobs for his father every time he asked and, hell, he even started going through Becca’s classes’ notes when she brought them home during the weekends. Maybe he could try that college thing, in the end. He went out with Becca’s friends, he went out with Steve’s friends, because Steve had indeed made friends in art school. And they were good people. A little too much sometimes, but good people. Most of them were from Brooklyn, and that was why they often ended up grabbing drinks even during the week. And seeing them so frequently helped Bucky notice things. He was the first one to _see_.

“She is going to ask you out,” he told Steve point-blank when Gail Richards excused herself to go to the restroom.

She was a pretty girl, with flaming red hair, green eyes and a cascade of freckles on her nose. She wanted to become a photographer and, in Steve’s opinion – that wasn’t absolutely biased by the fact that he had a crush on her – she was quite good. Bucky couldn’t really say. Since the magazines, which he didn’t like to think about too much, he was weird around pictures. The thing he could say was that she was determined and idealistic and probably a real good match for Steve.

The same Steve who choked on his beer and that Bucky had to hit on the back a couple of times to avoid ending up in the emergency room. “What the hell, Buck?”

“She likes you,” Bucky shrugged and downed his whisky; the melting ice tinkled at the bottom of the glass. “Even a blind man could see it.”

Steve looked around as if terrified that someone could have heard what Bucky had said. When he registered that his other friends were too busy fighting on what drink to have next, he relaxed.

“I don’t know, Buck, she…”

Bucky got up. He needed another whisky. No rocks this time. “She’s gonna ask you out,” he repeated. “So be a man and do it first. Doesn’t seem proper to make a dame ask.”

*

Steve and Gail went on their first date Saturday 6th November, Year of the Lord 1937, or 2nd Kislev 5698, as your God prefers, and Bucky Barnes spent Shabbat training the person he was– let’s say keen on – to spare him – on how to be a perfect gentleman on a date with a girl.

Because he was a fucking good friend.

Then, because he was a pretty shitty Jew, Bucky Barnes spent the night drinking himself to stupor.

*

During the weeks of his misery, Bucky often found himself wandering near the Navy Yard, hat low on his forehead and a scarf covering half his face.

A part of him wanted to understand _what_ he was exactly. Was this queerness of him all Steve? Was he a queer only for Steve? He didn’t want to dress up like a woman, that was something he was definitely sure of, but… did he like other men? He could say that Hollywood stars were attractive and he had indeed been turned on by that shirtless pic of Randolph Scott, but… Would he like being with another man, in the end?

Women were… they were somehow more familiar to him. He had necked a bit with some of the girls he had taken on dates, a couple of times, but nothing more than some open-mouthed kisses and a hand up the skirt. And it wasn’t… it wasn’t _bad_. Well, there had been too much perfume for his taste and their skin had felt a bit bitter for that, but he guessed that wasn’t the point, really. But what would it feel like, kissing a man? The scratch of stubble, a hard body under his hands instead of a soft one, full of curves. Low, throaty grunts instead of high-pitched breaths. He shivered every time he thought about it, his nails sinking deep in his palms.

But he was a coward. He didn’t have the guts to actually sneak into one of those alleys, find a sailor or a rent boy and make time with them. People knew the Barneses in Brooklyn. People talked.

So, he just turned the corner and walked home, cold and guilt freezing down his need.

*

The end of November brought Thanksgiving and then Hanukkah. Every night for a whole week Bucky had to endure seeing Steve’s hair painted gold in the light of the candles and his mouth turned up in fondness as Bucky and his father and sisters took turns in saying the blessings.

In those moments, Bucky couldn’t believe that God – either the Jews’ or the Christians’, which, in the end, were one and the same – could judge as unnatural and disgusting what he felt in the depths of his heart. He felt only warmth. He felt only family. He felt only love.

So George said the words the first night and lit the first candle, and Bucky said the words, the second night, and lit the candle, and Rebecca, Martha, Judith after them, and George guided Winnie’s hand when she lit the sixth Hanukkah candle whispering the blessing in Hebrew. The following day, the seventh candle was lit by Steve, and Bucky guided his hand, like he had done the previous year, when Steve had come for the first time to Hanukkah, after Sarah’s death. And if that time Bucky pressed a bit more with his fingertips to prevent him from noticing that he was shaking, nobody saw.

“ _Barukh ata Adonai Eloheinu, melekh ha'olam, asher kid'shanu b'mitzvotav v'tzivanu l'hadlik ner Hanukkah,_ ” Bucky whispered, as the golden, trembling light cast deep shadows on Steve’s features.

The last candle, they lit all together, George holding it, the family touching his forearm from every side. Then, he recited the hymn Hanerot Halalu and Bucky pressed his shoulder against Steve’s, fingers itching to intertwine with his. As his father chanted, Bucky whispered the translation at Steve’s hear, his breath caressing his skin. “ _We kindle these lights for the miracles and the wonders_ ,” Bucky murmured the first verse, lips brushing the tip of his ear, and Steve’s breath hitched, getting trapped somewhere in his throat, but he didn’t move.

He leaned against Bucky, as he went on with the prayer, and Bucky thought, ah, Bucky thought, _Oh, what a wonder_.

*

Two days before Christmas, the heating system broke.

Two days before Christmas, Bucky Barnes packed Steve Rogers’ objections in a bundle, together with their cold-affected owner and moved them to his parents’ house.

They were crammed.

Winnifred’s brother was staying over with his wife and three daughters, two of whom were scarily identical twins. The girls had been piled up all together in Bucky and Becca’s room, except the twins, who were staying in Judith’s bed, while their parents shared Martha’s old one – she had indeed managed to get Becca’s reign. So, Steve and Bucky ended up putting couch cushions on the floor and camped in the living room, definitely too close for Bucky’s battered soul.

“I know it’s not ideal,” Bucky said, sitting gingerly on the edge of their makeshift bed and handing Steve a glass of warm milk and honey. He would be dead before that damn cold became something worse.

“The alternative was freeze to death, so,” he shrugged. “I take couch cushions over death every day.”

Bucky smiled, taking a sip from his own glass. “So, you admit we would have frozen to death.”

Steve rolled his eyes. “I admit it, your honor.”

Bucky chuckled and reached out for the poker, pushing a couple of logs on the side to the center of the fireplace. Slowly, the dying embers came back to life, lazy flames wrapping around the crumbling wood.

“I’ll go check if something changed, tomorrow,” Bucky said, already thinking about how cold was going to be outside. It had snowed a couple of days prior, and it was likely that it would again. White Christmas indeed.

“I can come with you,” Steve said immediately.

“No, you are staying home. You have a cold,” Bucky tried his best reasonable voice, completely aware of the fact that it wasn’t going to change shit.

Steve kicked him in the shins and Bucky hissed. “I have to get out anyway. I have to see Gail and give her her Christmas present.”

Bucky would have preferred another kick in the shin.

“Oh, yeah? And what Christmas present are you going to give her?” he wiggled his eyebrows and Steve kicked him again. Be careful what you wish for.

“Don’t be crass, Barnes,” he rolled his eyes. “It’s just a dumb portrait,” he shrugged.

Bucky sighed, then finished his milk, suddenly wishing he had spiked it with something stronger than honey. “Nothing that comes from you is dumb, Steve,” he said, reaching out to put the empty glass on the short-legged table that had been moved on the side to make space for the couch cushions.

Steve raised a corner of his lip. “You have to say that.”

“Yeah? Why’s that? It’s not like we’re related or something.”

_If you say because we’re brothers I’m going to off myself._

“You’re my best pal,” he said as if it was the easiest thing in the world.

_Yeah._

“I can say if you suck at something.”

“Nah, that’s not really you.”

Bucky laughed, because it was damn true and lifted a corner of the colorful blanket that Abigail had found for them somewhere in the attic.

“Come on, under the covers,” he nudged Steve with his big toe, and he wriggled under the afghan, pressing his back against the sofa. Bucky imitated him, turning on the side, facing him. He was so close. If Bucky just leaned a bit in, he could brush the tip of his nose against Steve’s.

“Can’t believe to avoid freezing to death I have to wake up to your ugly mug,” Steve said with an impish grin.

Bucky kicked him and Steve laughed.

“You’re a punk.”

“Jerk,” a pause. “Night, Buck.”

“Good night, Stevie.”

*

On Christmas Eve, Bucky went with Steve to midnight mass at his old parish in Red Hook. People hugged him and asked him how he was and told him they kept Sarah in their prayers still. Steve smiled at every single one of them and thanked them and his eyes were glossy. When they walked home, Bucky threw his arm over Steve’s shoulders and pretended not to see the salty trails of tears on his cheeks.

*

Two days after Christmas, the heating of their apartment was still busted, but Bucky’s relatives had left, so Bucky and Steve moved their stuff in Becca and Bucky’s old room and Becca was sent for her utmost displeasure to bunk with Judith and Martha. She was just moaning about it while Steve took a bath, perched on Bucky’s bed as he tried to do some fucking reading regarding college applications. He still wasn’t sure about it, but you can never know.

“I can’t see why I cannot sleep in my bed,” she was saying, reaching out to steal the cigarette that Bucky had just lit.

He let her take it, because he was a very good brother, and fiddled with his silver case to take another and, at the same time, managed to keep the stack of papers balanced on his knees. “Because Steve is,” Bucky answered, flat.

“I know Steve since we were toddlers,” she shot back. “They used to bathe all three of us together.”

Bucky turned a page and took in a mouthful of smoke. “I wish I was deaf.”

“He could sleep with you and I could sleep in my bed for one goddamn time,” she hissed through his teeth.

Bucky, who had just spent three extremely uncomfortable nights squished against Steve Rogers, trying hard not to think about the fact that he had jerked off numerous times thinking about him, blushed.

“He is a guest,” he babbled, turning another page.

He didn’t even know which University information he was going through. He could feel Becca’s eyes piercing through his skull.

“And how’s Steve’s girlfriend?” she asked, abruptly.

Bucky inhaled and raised his gaze from his papers.

“You should ask Steve, shouldn’t you?” he deadpanned.

Gail had adored Steve’s present, of course, and had knitted Steve a scarf by hand in return. It was lumpy, Bucky thought, but he knew when to hold his tongue. Steve had forbidden Bucky to buy him anything since he was still paying the bills for the both of them, and Bucky had been too wrapped up in all the boxing slash working-for-his-dad slash stealing-Becca’s-notes slash looking-up-colleges-in-secret slash drinking-as-an-Irish-miner-every-time-Steve-left-to-be-with-his-girlfriend slash dating-half-Brooklyn-in-the-hope-to-find-his-soulmate thing to think about something creative. So, for the first time, he had been true to his word and given Steve a big fat nothing for Christmas. The Barneses, of course, had submerged him with gifts. To balance their generosity, Steve had made little medallion-sized portraits for all of them, including Bucky. _For your future sweetheart_ , he had said, blushing, and Bucky had to resist the sudden urge to scream.

“You don’t like her?” Becca’s tone was conversational enough, but Bucky had known her since she was one minute old and he didn’t buy it.

“I like her just fine,” he answered, probably too plain to be convincing.

Thing was, he did like Gail. She was pretty and smart, if a bit too serious and very political, but she seemed to like Steve a whole deal and that was enough as far as Bucky was concerned. Steve deserved someone who saw him. Really saw him.

When Becca said nothing, Bucky raised his gaze, the butt of the cigarette between his teeth, and when their eyes met his sister expression suddenly changed. She lowered the hand that held her own smoke and she… _softened_ , her lovely Cupid-bow mouth curled in a sad smile, her eyes filling up with… pity, compassion. Bucky looked away, shame and humiliation quickly running up his throat, but before he could realize what was really happening, she spoke.

“Oh Bucky,” she said, and he felt the world crumbling under his feet. “You are not going to tell him, are you?”

His heart was beating furiously in his chest. She knew. She knew. How was it possible? He had been so careful; he hadn’t told anyone; he had avoided walking by the Navy Yard because he feared that the people there could see the queerness in him and recognize him and tell the world that Bucky Barnes was an impostor who played the part of the charming eligible bachelor but secretly pined over his best friend.

“Tell him what?” he growled through his teeth as he felt the panic build.

Becca shook her head and got on her feet. Bucky wanted to jump up, grab her, beg her to stay, beg her not to tell. What if she told their parents? What if she told Steve? He was going to be sick. He could feel the bile climbing up his esophagus. He was frozen in terror.

But Becca didn’t leave the room; she walked to her bedside table and crouched, as Bucky had done so many months before, now. She delicately took out her drawer and lifted the small pile of magazines stashed there. She sat on the rug and went through them for a while, until she found what she was looking for. Then, she walked back to the bed and curled up at its feet, taking away the college papers from his hands and placing there another nameless gossip magazine. “Read this,” she said, resolutely.

It was an article, clearly longer than those he had seen before. _‘Still pals,’_ was the title. _‘by Esther Meade’_. There was a picture of Cary Grant and Randolph Scott, dressed to impress, walking down a street and, beside it, another photo of Grant with a blonde woman Bucky vaguely remember from some movie he couldn’t place. The subtitle was telling: _‘Not even a wife could separate Randy and Cary – but then, Virginia wouldn’t want to.’_

Bucky breathed out a cloud of grey smoke and started to read.

> _‘What happens to friendship when one of two men who have been pals marries?’ A metal hand closed around Bucky’s insides. ‘Does the man who has been left in lonely bachelorhood resent his friend’s new bride? Is he jealous of the girl who now comes first in his pal’s affections?’_

_Yes!_ Something horrible roared inside Bucky’s chest, a monster who was devouring him from the pit of his stomach. _Yes, yes, yes_.

The article went on with other rhetorical questions and then proceeded to interview Randy Scott in person.

> _‘“Cary Grant has been, and still is, the best friend I have ever had in my life,”_ _declared Randy, as he stretched in his armchair and flung his hat on a nearby table. It was, in fact, to Cary’s dressing room at Paramount Studio that he had brought me for our talk. Randy seemed to be quite as much at home there as if they had been his own quarters.’_

Scott went on saying how happy he was for Grant and how their relationship hadn’t changed a bit, how _marvelous_ a wife Virginia was and how the three of them went about together a good deal but then–

> _‘“I miss his constant companionship, of course.” In spite of his bravado and sensible acceptance of this new state of affairs, a wistfulness lay behind Randy’s words. One instinctively feels the sense of loss and emptiness that has come into Randy’s life since Cary married Virginia Cherrill.’_

Bucky’s breath quivered and he covered his mouth with a hand, pretending to take another smoke.

> _‘They had lived together, these friends, for two years before Cary met Virginia. They originally met on the studio lot, and from the first, were drawn to each other by that intangible something by which one instantly recognizes a kindred spirit.’_

Bucky thought about little scrawny Stevie Rogers, his scraped knees and his bloody nose as he tried to punch a boy twice his size. _Kindred spirit_ , thought the boxer, Bucky Barnes.

> _‘“I introduced him to Virginia,” said Randy with a rueful, little smile.’_

The article went on and on on the dynamics of the travel by sea that had brought Scott and Grant to England, where Virginia Cherrill was waiting, and about the miscommunications caused by the radiograms.

> _‘“Did you stay in England for their wedding?” I asked. Randy stared moodily down at his hands for a long moment before he replied. “No,” he finally answered. “I had to return home–alone. When I next saw Cary he was a married man.”’_

Bucky stopped reading. He didn’t need to go on. It was enough.

He raised his eyes and his sister was still there, sitting at the feet of his bed, one hand massaging lazily his ankle. She was just looking at him, eyes serious, heart-shaped face framed by the smoke that lazily came out of her cigarette, much more grown-up than what he thought. _She knows_ , he thought. _And she is here. She knows and she’s not disgusted_.

They practiced two religions, and both said he was an abomination, but Rebecca Barnes knew her brother and loved him, all of him. Screw old books. Bucky tried to open his mouth to say something, anything, but the door suddenly opened, and Steve stood on the threshold. He moved to step in, then stopped, eyes going from one sibling to the other, sensing that something was going on. “I can…”

“Becca,” said Bucky abruptly. _Thank you, thank you, thank you._ “Can you give us a moment?”

Her lips turned up for a second, then she got on her feet, and Bucky mourned the lack of contact when her hand left his ankle. She kissed Steve goodnight as she moved past him and closed the door.

Steve frowned then moved towards the bed, the wooden floor creaking under his slippers. “Buck? Everything okay?”

The mattress dipped and Bucky looked down to the magazine, teeth nibbling at his lower lip. He took a deep breath, then raised his gaze. Steve had sat where Becca was until a second ago and was looking at him, half concerned, half puzzled.

“Do you know that Cary Grant and Randolph Scott are lovers?” he asked point-blank.

Steve’s jaw went slack in shock.

“They have been for at least four years. They’ve been living together in this lovely Santa Monica beach house.”

Bucky had no idea what he was doing.

Steve opened and closed his mouth, speechless.

“They call it Bachelor’s Hall, magazines keep doing reports on their exceptional bachelor’s life so that every eligible young lady in America can think they will be the next Mrs. Cary Grant,” Bucky took in a mouthful of air. “But truth is, they are together. God, it’s so obvious, only an idiot could not see it,” a burst of hysterical laughter left his lips.

Steve was still completely at loss.

“So, Grant married, a coupla years ago. She’s blonde, very pretty, lookit,” he turned the magazine so that Steve could see the photo of Grant and his ex-wife playing backgammon during their honeymoon.

“Very pretty,” Steve repeated, playing it safe.

That caused another series of giggles coming right out of Bucky’s chest.

“Sorry, sorry,” he babbled, wiping a tear from the corner of his eye, almost blinding himself with the still lit stick.

Steve seemed quite alarmed.

“So, he married her, and this Esther Meade woman interviewed Scott and… You should read this, it’s… he sounds so much like the abandoned, betrayed ex-husband. It’s uncanny,” Bucky cleared his throat and imitated a deep manly voice with a southern accent. “ _“I introduced him to Virginia,” said Randy with a rueful, little smile._ A rueful, little smile!” Bucky tried so hard not to burst into a peal of crazy laughter again that tears started pressing painfully at the corner of his eyes. “Read it, Steve, listen, _“Did you stay in England for their wedding?” I asked. Randy stared moodily down at his hands for a long moment before he replied. “No,” he finally answered. “I had to return home–alone. When I next saw Cary he was a married man.”_ So fucking dramatic!” he exploded, and his cheeks were wet.

“Bucky…”

“No! Steve,” he inhaled sharply. “This man. This man saw the person he loved marry someone else. Most likely because someone in Hollywood told him to. He was so heartbroken that he left England, where he had gone just to do what a friend should do, support his best friend going to his fiancée or whatever, and he went back home. Have you any idea how long it takes to go from New York to fucking Portsmouth and back?” he didn’t wait for Steve to answer. “I don’t want to be this man, Steve. Even if they are back together now, God knows how long that will last, before either of them is marrying someone else. I don’t want to be this man.”

He threw the magazine aside and kneeled on the bed. Steve was still sitting and still uncomprehending, and he was looking at Bucky, trying to figure it out, trying to figure him out. Steve had never looked at Bucky like this. He had always been able to understand him completely, to recognize the faintest mood swing with a glance. Bucky Barnes didn’t want to live in a world in which he wasn’t completely understood by Steven Rogers. He didn’t want to live in a world in which he was hiding something from him.

“I’m in love with you, Steve,” he said, plainly, so that there could not be any doubt on what he meant. “And I think I have been since I met you when love was just something our parents whispered in the dark. I want to whisper it to you. In the darkness, in the light, I don’t care. You can sock me in the jaw right now or you can call the police or you can run away and never see me again, but Steve. _Steve_ ,” he took another mouthful of smoke and let the cigarette dangle from the corner of his lips, sinking his nails into his own thighs to avoid taking Steve’s head in his hands and press his lips against his half-open mouth. “I love you. In every single way a person can love another person.”

Steve licked his lips, looking for the words, then blinked furiously, and narrowed his eyes and when he met again Bucky’s gaze there was such fury in his light blue irises that Bucky’s thought: _He is gonna break my goddamn nose_. But when Steve raised his hand, it was not to punch him. He grasped the back of his neck and he dragged him forward so violently that their foreheads collided with a loud _tock_ and Bucky lost his balance, hands blindly grasping at Steve – his thigh, his bony shoulder.

It was like that photo – Bucky thought stupidly – that photo in which the dark silhouettes of Grant and Scott stood dramatically dark against the panorama of the glimmering sea, leaning one towards the other, arms bent at their elbows, gazing in each other’s eyes with such intensity that even if their whole figures were pitch black shapes, you felt just as someone who was uncomfortably breaching an intimate moment. Bucky knew he was looking at Steve in the exact same way, and a shiver ran down his spine when he realized he was not the only one. He inhaled sharply and ash fell on the duvet, but neither of them did anything to prevent it. Steve’s left hand took out the cigarette from his mouth, thumb and pointer so close to the lit extremity that Bucky thought _This punk is gonna burn himself_. But Steve didn’t, he discarded the butt somewhere on his right, hopefully inside Becca’s ashtray, and his fingers came up to Bucky’s face, smelling of smoke and fire, pushing back from his forehead a rebellious curl. Bucky’s eyelids fluttered, his breath hitched.

“James Buchanan,” Steve whispered, and it was soft and low and at the same time, so in contrast and so coherent with the fire that burned in his eyes. He paused, as if enjoying the taste of his name, then smiled. “How can I possibly top that speech?”

And he kissed him.


End file.
